LA TIMES: Israel Considers Conditional Cease Fire

[seafan]

Israel Considers Conditional Cease Fire

By Laura King and Megan K. Stack, Times Staff Writers
11:56 AM PDT, July 17, 2006

BEIRUT — Israel for the first time today signaled its willingness to accept a cease-fire based on a pullback of Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon's frontier and the release of two captured soldiers, even as other countries, including the United States, began efforts to evacuate their war-trapped citizens.

snip

In an apparent softening of Israel's previous cease-fire terms, a senior Israeli official said a cease-fire would be possible if Hezbollah withdrew fighters from the border zone and released the two Israeli soldiers seized last week in a cross-border raid. Previously, Israel had demanded the disarming of Hezbollah, the only Lebanese faction to have kept its weaponry after the end of the civil war.

A senior Israeli official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Israeli position had been conveyed to Italy's prime minister, who has been trying to mediate a truce.

Talk of a cease-fire also came from Iran, blamed by the United States and Israel as the guiding hand behind Hezbollah. Iran's foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, said talks in Damascus with Syria's vice president, Farouk Sharaa, about a truce and a prisoner exchange would be "an acceptable and fair" way to stop the fighting.

Israel was cool to the idea of the deployment of an international peacekeeping force in south Lebanon to bolster what has been a small and largely ineffectual United Nations contingent.

The idea of an international peacekeeping force, put forth by U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, was rejected by Israel as premature. Those reservations were echoed by the Bush administration.

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[seafan]

1. Much more detail in this article:

snip

Israeli commanders said today that Israel intended to enforce a no-go zone extending about a half-mile north of the border.
Israel also confirmed what an army spokesman described as a "very small incursion" overnight to dismantle Hezbollah positions, returning to Israel before first light. No casualties were reported.
The developments came one day after Israel and Hezbollah escalated their blood feud, as dozens of Lebanese died during airstrikes across their nation and the eight Israelis were killed when militants slammed rockets into the port city of Haifa.
As explosions shook the earth and families cowered in shelters, both sides vowed to deliver even fiercer blows in the days to come. And world leaders struggled to find a diplomatic path out of the bloodshed.

snip

Although Israel's clash is with Hezbollah, the attacks on this seaside country appear to have done far greater damage to Lebanese civilians and infrastructure. Hezbollah has continued to shoot an unabated barrage of rockets into Israel, in turn frequently hitting civilians, even after Israeli missiles shattered the airport and highways, struck predominantly Christian neighborhoods and drove thousands of people from their homes.
Israel has attacked Hezbollah offices and the headquarters of the group's leader. But about 1,500 airstrikes have also targeted a lighthouse, grain silos, power plants, bridges, airports and a truck packed with children, targets with no apparent relationship to Hezbollah.

"Why are we killing each other? Why are we creating these victims?" asked 60-year-old Yemen Srour, a Lebanese woman whose home was crushed and family members wounded in Sunday morning attacks on Beirut's southern suburbs.
Crouched on a thin foam mattress at a makeshift refugee shelter in Beirut, Srour used the tails of her Islamic head scarf to dab the tears from her cheeks. "I don't think there is a point to this," she said.
Despite the relentless bombings, Israel has not disrupted Hezbollah's leadership or smashed the militants' ability to wage guerrilla war, said Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's chief.

snip

Former Israeli army chief of staff Shaul Mofaz, now a Cabinet minister, described the rockets used in the Haifa strike as "Syrian ammunition." Israel also said Hezbollah had made first use of Iranian-made Fajr missiles, with a 25-mile range and a much bigger warhead.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice echoed the criticism of Syria and Iran on Sunday, blaming them in part for the crisis.
"I absolutely see that Syria and Iran are playing a part in this. They're not even trying to hide their hand," Rice said in an interview on CBS' "Face the Nation." Rice declined to say whether the U.S. would go so far as to support Israel if it chose to strike Iran in retaliation for that country's alleged role in some of the missile strikes hitting Israel.

Many Lebanese scoff at criticism that Hezbollah is using Iranian-made weaponry, pointing out bitterly that the United States manufactures much of Israel's arsenal.

snip

And buried at the end of this lengthy article is this:

The Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot reported that elite forces had been deployed in Lebanon.

But Israeli military analysts said a large-scale ground offensive would occur only after military strategists felt that other options — including the air campaign, the naval blockade and the severing of major land routes — had been exhausted.

[endarkenment]

2. "struck predominantly Christian neighborhoods"?

So much for the Lebanese civilian casulties being accidental. Targeting Christian neighborhoods is simple terrorism, no different than Hezbollah's indiscriminate attacks on Israeli cities. There are no good guys in this war.

[Igel]

3. The conclusion doesn't follow from the premise.

It's consistent with the premise, but not a valid deduction.

What's needed is a statement saying there was no valid target in the Christian neighborhoods. It doesn't say that. In fact, the reporters apparently have no idea that to use a weapon, you must first acquire the weapon; and if you want to fight a group, one thing you really want is for them to have no way of acquiring replacement weapons. Given that level of military sophistication, I wouldn't expect the reporter to even ponder whether there might be a plausible target; then again, I'd expect the reporters to be getting most of their news from their fellow patrons in the bar.

Israel's been pretty good about its targeting; in the cases where I wouldn't have done likewise, given their armaments and objectives, I almost invariably have no idea what the possible target is, but neither do I know that there is no target apart from civilians. The old "Israel struck an apartment building, killing 6 in a family, including 4 kids"; sometimes later you find that across the street there's a good target, and they missed, or that actually there were 8 people present, one of which was a perfectly good target sheltering behind kids. But most frequently you hear nothing.

[endarkenment]

4. Eventually your bitter defense of the obvious becomes

mere denial. Get a grip, both sides of this war are attacking civilians.

[Igel]

6. I'm not in denial.

I don't jump to conclusions.

There's a difference. When you accuse somebody of a war crime, I rather prefer evidence be forthcoming, or a confession, not an exposition of one's beliefs.

Israel's done a decent job in targeting. This makes little sense if their goal is to kill civilians. It makes them far more inept than Hezbollah.

[muryan]

7. members of hezbollah are civilians

Does that mean israel shouldn't target them? Also since they move the vast majority of their weapons in convoys with families and keep them in residential neighborhoods, does that mean israel shouldn't target them? If hezbollah didn't purposely use the population as a human shield, there would be no collateral damage.

[daleo]

10. Your argument is sophistry

You know there is a clear distinction between Hizzbollah and civilians. It's the same argument Bin Laden made about Americans on 911.

[daleo]

5. Perhaps this described the 8 dead Canadians

"one of which was a perfectly good target sheltering behind kids"

There were four kids in that one under the age of seven. It looks like you would be ok with anything, as long as there was a "perfectly good target" somewhere close.

The reason you hear nothing, is that Israel hasn't bothered explaining its targets, except in the vaguest of generalities.

[Igel]

8. Israel's not stated its targets.

The media's been doing that. Airport, ports, airbase, roads, bridges, Hezbollah leadership, command posts and artillery positions. And civilians ... but, no, most haven't said they were targeted.

In the stories in which the only mention is civilians, there's no target mentioned. This leads to the inference that the civilians were the target. But sometimes one reads the same story in a different paper, or a summary the next day, and then you find there was a target. Sometimes there's no follow up, and one's left with an inference but no evidence.

But one is left with a problem. If a combatant's hiding among civilians, what do you do? Attack, and risk the civilians' lives? Not attack, saying that this provides him with a free pass, and allows him to continue attacking when he's ready? For this reason, laws shift the guilt to the person hiding among civilians. Deir, the Hamas operative in Gaza, is responsible for the killing of a Palestinian family since he sheltered with them, and he shares the guilt with the head of the household, who invited Deir to dine with them; Deir killed them using an Israeli missile fired by an Israeli, but Deir killed them.

Taking Arabs as human shields is bad when the IDF does it; using Arabs as human shields is bad when Hezbollah does it. There's a reason it's a war crime: it kills civilians.

[daleo]

9. I am glad you agree that using human shields is wrong

I haven't heard there were Hizzbollah targets in the area of the 8 dead Canadians. It is up to Israel to explain itself, and tell the world exactly who the targets were, where they were, and why the wrong house was hit.

The U.S. explained itself after accidentally targetting Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan - Israel should do the same. That's not too much to expect from a military force after it kills civilians, especially civilians from a country that is showing it internatioal political support. Otherwise it stands to lose that support.